Monday, November 23, 2015

Welcome to
the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 69th edition! For more details
about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog
Banter page.

Blog Banter 69 - Because of Space-Magic.CCP sometimes get stuck between a
veldspar 'roid and a hard place when they try to blend realism with sensible
game mechanics in our sci-fi simulator. Sometimes they create a scientific
answer such as 4th dimensional drag to explain our 'submarines in space'. Other
times, not so much.

When a null-sec
Citadel is destroyed players 'stuffz' is to be magicked to another station.Why
should a citadel be different to a titan?Should CCP ensure that 'space magic' always has a plausible explanation
or do we need just to say "Well, it’s only a game!" and engage the
willing suspension of disbelief? How
should it work when a citadel goes boom, how do we balance risk with reward,
and how should any "space-magic" be explained?

==================================================

First off, I hate that term, “Space
Magic”, I really do. Wanna know why? Cause I am an aficionado of Science
Fiction… not Fantasy. Oh don’t get me wrong, my dad gave me his original copies
of the Hobbit and LotR set when I was young, I think around 9 or so and I fell deeply
in love with all of it. And for them as dunt know it, J.R.R. wrote the Hobbit
as a boys book, not as adult fare and as many do know he wrote all of it as a
way to give life, a background, the Lore if you will, to the languages he
created. My love for J.R.R.’s stories, their characters and events and places
is unbounded, but…

I don’t want to BE an elf. Nor do
I want to BE Frodo, or Gandalf or Bildo much less do I want to wander (OK go a
Questing) in Middle Earth following some improbable female elf ass in a bikini
all around… much less some manly elf guys ass, or any other ass for that
matter. I tried and trialed many of the fantasy MMOs through the years and none
held the slightest interest for me. This was why I came to EVE as basically an
MMO noob in my 50th year. The SciFi MMO’s I tried were all planet based and I had
become disenchanted and didn’t try very hard to find any that were space based
either. MMO’s in general didn’t interest me, until EVE.

I have no other interest in fantasy
except LOTR, outside of those stories alone I am a Science Fiction reader. To
me, there is no Magic except in Middle Earth, everywhere else there is only
Science. So much so that I firmly believe in Clark’s
3rd Law: “Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I mean take an iPhone
back 200 years, take a few pix and vids of the locals and see if you don’t get
burned at the stake as a Witch and a Stealer of Souls.… go ahead, try it.

The difference between us and
them is we understand and accept that there are things in the world we do not
understand yet… things that, to us, look like ‘magic’… but KNOW they aren’t...
We know that they are a simply as yet undefined phenomenon, that’s all. Just
like sunlight and lightning use to be yet to be defined phenomena, phenomena we
control and make use of every second of every day today.

Yes, at least in the Lore I want that
detailed TLDR technical explanation of the seeming Magic Trick… not just “Hocus
Pocus”+‘Wavy Hands’=Voilà!… I hate hate hate that we land on stations and are ‘magically’
transported inside them, and yet we have to manually undock by flying out of a
docking port. If we have transporters capable of transporting a fully loaded Providence
INTO a station, then they damn well can transport it OUT. No, just goddamn No.

There is no coding reason, other
than the work involved in coding it, why we can’t land at a station, where the
docks are aligned to the various Star Gates (or the Nav Beacons set in space so
we can maneuver around those pesky planets and moons that we SHOULD NOT BE ABLE
to WARP THROUGH…)… anyhoo, so we land facing a dock, burnin until we are INSIDE
the dock and then I’ll accept “poof” and you’re in your Hangar Bay (and yes I
would personally prefer to FLY into the station and FLY through the station to
my Bay… but that’s for another post). Now the converse must also be true, If we
set course before we undock, then we fly out of (the station ejects us from)
the dock facing that Gate/Nav Beacon… if we don’t set a course, then the station
chooses the least crowded dock to punt us out of… simple right?

Yeah… but never gonna happen in
EVE. Wanna know why? Cause PVP.

Landing and being transported IN
can provide some modicum of safety for those transporting goods around, and
goods making it to the station where they will be sold is good for the economy…
but, PVP… so undocking takes place at the same spot for every one and very
rarely point towards the gate you need to go to, so you are at a far greater
PVP risk when starting your journey. PVP balance. Not too much safety which the
PVPers would scream bloody murder about and not too much Risk, which the PVEers
would scream…. Ya-da ya-da…

This is the thing about “magic”
in EVE. PVP. As Drak pointed out, the crux is Risk vs Reward. Much of the ‘magic’
in EVE was decided on not for good gameplay or Immersion in a virtual
environment… if you want that, do as I do and fly in Elite Dangerous where
immersion and physics take precedence over PVP considerations. But then ED is
not a PVP game, it is a PVE game with some open world PVP. As such the Frontier
Devs have devoted far more time to the physics of their verse than the CCP Devs
have… they have different goals you see?

Drak asks (paraphrased), “How and Why should a citadel be different,
or the same as, a Titan?”

What Drak is asking, in effect
is, what do you think about “Asset Safety”. At EVE Vegas CCP Nullarbor did the
Structures presentation where he discussed everything Structures but... we are talking
specifically about Asset Safety. This is
the when a null-sec Citadel is destroyed players 'stuffz' is to be magicked
to another station thing that kicked off this particular BB. Nullsec
players, it seems, are not willing to risk it all… not ‘really.’

Oh I know with a Sov Flip you can
get locked out of a station you used to have access to and thereby, “lose” all
your stuff that was in that station. That happened to me once. But the truth
is, you don’t. All the stuff stays in your personal or corp hangar bays which
the new owners have no access to… even though they took control of the station by
force of arms or by subversive or traitorous action. But it’s OK… ‘cause you
can still make contracts, valid legal contracts transferring ownership of any
assets in a flipped Station to whoever you want. Which means you can sell your ‘lost’
goods’ to someone with access to that station, or whatever other arrangement
you care to make.

No again, this makes no sense and
is all about risk-adversity and stuff-retention and not about Immersion and
Risk=Reward… it’s about “But I dunt wanna
lose my stuffs!” Anyhoo… so now, with these destructible Outposts and
Stations, IE Citadels, CCP needs a way to keep the players stuff safe or they
risk losing players to ‘safer’ games. Who’da though you’d ever hear that about
Nullseccers? Seems we’re all a bit Risk Adverse under the rhetoric.

So, Asset Safety goes into effect
automatically on station destruction OR can be implemented manually whenever.
Everything is ejected into space, all Personal and Corp hangars are safely
recovered. You then choose where to recover your stuff. Stations in same
system, is free and takes 5 days. Nearest NCP Station, cost 10-15% of the value
and takes 20 days to be available to you.

Here is the break-down of what
drops and what is saved.

But… for me specifically the
answer to the BB question, “How and Why should
a citadel be different, or the same as, a Titan?”First off, it aint different in
Anoikis. This question is space biased… It applies only to Empire. In Anoikis,
in wormhole space our POSes, our Citadels, if subjected to a Rapid Unplanned Disassembly,
will drop a percentage of everything… just like ships. No Magic Safety Net for
us oh no.

As far as I am concerned, if it
is this way for us, it should be this way for everyone… we wormholers are being
punished for living in holes and this will I fear reduce the number of players willing
to live and die in Anoikis. Unfair CCP, unfair. Of course that is exactly why
CCP is making this safety net for nullsec… to keep them from fearing to live
and play in their space. But fuck Anoikis I guess. Here is the break-down of
what drops… everything.

Asset Safety, this magic-save-yer-stuff-net,
is not realistic in the game context and it is not in the spirit of EVE. It is
however as I said, in the spirit of we-don’t-want-to-alienate-nullseccers… and
that’ all it is. It is one more WoWish nerf of EVE’s ‘Loss is Real’ and ‘Risk=Reward’
basis. And the distance from here to where players can’t lose dey stuffs ever is
not as long a leap as it used to be, now is it? And it is one I fear CCP will one
day make in the interest of financial stability and profits.

“The brainchild of the Blogfather, Crazy Kinux, blog banters are single
subjects discussed across the EVE blogging community. It encourages the sharing
of ideas and cross-pollination of readership. All in all a healthy thing for
any community.“

Thursday, November 19, 2015

I logged into Star Citizen last
night after a bit of trouble with the client. I could not find a reason but the
Launcher would not install the client. Finally used “Run as Admin” and that
solved the issue. This was, essentially, my first real exploration of SC as the
few times I had logged on before I just boofed around the hangar, checking out
my ship, the Aurora MR, that’s me
up there, ol Tur, sittin in my Aurora in the hangar bay… (I highly recommend
you watch the… commercial).

My Aurora MR "Ignobilium"

OK, so initially I was boofing
around in the Hangar and checking out my singleship, trying out the camera,
looking for good shots to capture the moment as twere. The First Person
aspects… are definitely in the Win column. Walking around the world, entering
your ship like you would IRL, climbing in through the airlock, taking a seat in
the cockpit or climbing into your bunk. Yes, I said climbing into your bunk.

"Feenominal Cosmic Spasship!! itty bitty living space..."

The Aurora has a by the gods bunk
in the back and you can get in it to ‘sleep’ (IE logoff)… schweet. One thing
I want, I want name my ship. In EVE we can do this as a mechanic in the game,
in ED we can’t and I don’t see a Ship Name option offered in SC… that one goes
in the Boo column.

The Captain's Quarters, Star Citizen style...

Anyhoo, so I ended up wandering
around the Hangar Bay and found the door out… Yes Virginia, in Star Citizen before
the game has even been released, the Door works. Ironic huh? So I found that
there is a short corridor, really just a largish airlock, between the Hangar
and… well, a city. Or at least several blocks of a city. I walked through
Customs, with the std non-interactive mannequin NPCs and out into the Area 18
courtyard in ArcCorp City on Stanton III, keeping in mind that ArcCorp City is,
well, the whole damn planet (this is the alpha of the Social Module in SC). It
was… impressive to say the least…

View from the lobby between the Hangar Bay and Area 18...

Now here is where the fun begins.
First thing I did was do the tourist thing… you know, wander around with my
head on a swivel and my pie hole open catching alien flies of course until I
saw a stairway leading up to another level. I thought to get a better overall view
from there and started up it… and when I veered a bit to the right to look over
the railing… I fell through a glitch. Yup… fell right through the effin railing
to a ledge I could neither jump or climb up from nor safely jump or climb down
from. Frak. I spent a quite a while there… enjoying the view, wondering if I
was gonna die, and knowing that, in SC, you are NOT immortal… (moar on that
little bit of depressing news later…) So, yup… in my first 10 minutes logged
into SC I had gotten myself stuck onna ledge that… well, watch your feet, cause
that first step is a fukkin doozy…

Damn computer glitches...

Anyhoo… I explored both sides of
the ledge and jumped and jumped trying to climb up until my mouse finger, well,
dint bleed actually but you know what I mean… until I gave up. Then I tried,
very carefully, to see if I could jump down to another, lower ledge… you know,
just in case there was another way around or… nope. YYYYYAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa!
Splat.

Well. That was interesting, and you wake up (respawn) in a hospital... LOL

Having inadvertently figured out
life and death in the big city, now we get to the fun part… exploring!

Ye Olde Gunne Shoppe...

The anticipation I felt when I saw
a gun shop across the courtyard was… well, I’m an American and as so many of my
EU friends have said, “You Americans and your love affair with guns!” (said
with a sneer in a strong British accent) The which always strikes me as very strange
when said in chat in a WAR GAME like EVE or in an FPS… You know, a First Person
SHOOTER game, in which you SHOOT people… a lot of people, with guns and machine
guns and lasers and rocket launchers and tanks FFS… but they have an ‘issue’
with me ‘liking ‘real guns… sheesh.

But yes, I do have a strong
interest in firearms… I have been a hunter all my life, since I was 8, I have
been a target shooter, a registered PI, a gunsmith and a firearms instructor…
so yeah, I have an interest in firearms, virtual or real and a gunshop in a
spaceship game… well hell, of course I’m excited! Until I went inside…

We are not impressed...

What is with game Devs vision of
stores in the future? Why do ALL of them have HUGE wide open aisles with a vast
amount of empty floorspace?? No retailer worth his weight in Vaduul ears would
ever allow so much wasted space! I know whereof I speak, I used to be a gunshop
manager FFS!! There were like 17 guns on the rack in this shop… I had in one
shop easlily HALF the floor space of ‘Cubby Blast’ (effin ‘tarded name there
BTW) and 10 times that many guns!! Not to mention aisle racks loaded with holsters,
cleaning kits, knives, hunting kit and gee-gaws and tons of military surplus
gear and ammo shelves!

Seriously?

So, disappointed I was and am…
Could not actually buy a gun, could not use the range, couldn’t even find a
door for it and the asshat behind the counter was a mannequin and the counters…
don’t get me started about the counters!!
EMPTY!! Has anyone ever seen store counters as devoid of merchandise,
outside of Russia at the height of the cold war?? I haven’t… so much work needs
to be done here!! But at least the posters were cool.

Schweet! Long damn time for a meme to last though... =P

OK, so next up… G~Loc! A swanky-low-brow-spacer
bar. Granted ‘twas the middle of the afternoon, so dead was not the word, but,
if they ever get to where you can really interact with your avatars, the
atmosphere and décor are at least interesting enough… that and I’d love to see
this place IRL. Downsides? Wayyyyyyyyy too few bottles for a real bar… Ever
been in a real bar? Ever seen just 27 bottles on display or ready to pour?
Nope, me neither and what’s with the wall mounted bottle holder/pourer things?
What, bartenders of the future can’t do the flippin bottles thing?

Ya just gotta love this sign!

Not bad, nice ambiance...

Where's the bottle rack? Beer glasses? Wine glasses? Shot glasses?

What in Sam Hell are those bottle holder things??

So next up was… a clothing store.
I could not give less of a fuck for how my avatar is dressed up. All the people
who threw such a fit back in Incarna were all on about how “World of Darkness”
was nothing but “Sparkly Barbies”… and while I desperately want FP gameplay in
EVE, the ‘dress-up’ part of avatar based gameplay holds absolutely no interest
for me, whatsoever… So I walked right past Casabas. Besides, who names these
places? Isn’t a Casaba a “…winter seasonal melon of a variety with a wrinkled
yellow rind and sweet flesh?” How is that a good name for a clothing store? I
mean really?

A wrinkled yellow sweet flesh clothing store... meh.

Onward… Around the courtyard is a
stairway leading to a flying walkway over… well, I don’t know how far up we are
from the ground or groundfloor of these buildings, but I found I have a fear of
railings now in SC… go figure, but the view is stunning. At the end of the
skyway was the entrance to Astro Armada. At first, after the shitty names of a
few of the business here, I thought the name was a word play on Ramada Inn,
like the, you know, the Ramada of the Stars, IE a hotel. But nope… it was a
high end spaceship firm. I did take some pix inside but…

First one the name actually means what it says...

You see I was not alone. I
haven’t talked about the other players who were there because… well, they have
borne out, in full, all of Rixx Javix’s fears about FP avatar gameplay. There
were like 1 or 2 at first then I noticed a few more over time. At one point
there were like 5 or 6 active in the courtyard and surrounding spaces. ALL of
them spent the whole time I was there jumping and jumping and jumping and
running full tilt all over the place. And all they wanted to do was find a way,
any way, to fuck shit up if at all possible. You see there are these carts, like
fancy futuristic golf carts, that spawn now and again in places around Area 18.

Anyway, so you have these golf
carts see… and these, players, see… and all they can think of to do is ram them
into everything… and everyone… and try and get them to go over the railings…
and into the buildings… and so then you get this… see?

Burning wrecked carts and silly jumping hooligans <facepalm>

Anyway… so while they are all
doing exactly as Rixx guessed and acting like pure ‘tarded fools… I went so far
as to toggle my avatar to walk mode instead of jog for my leisurely sightseeing
stroll around the city and I have been trying to avoid getting any of those
idiots in my pix. Needless to say, they were jumping ALL over the showroom
model of a schweet single seat fighter on display inside Astro Armada and I
didn’t take any pix in there… simply too silly for me. I know these guys are
all supposed to somewhere in like their 20s and 30s… but TBH it was like being
surrounded by 10 year olds on a serious sugar buzz… I’m 55 and I wanted to
enjoy the immersion of such a highly detailed virtual environment… not feel
like I was at home with my kids at a birthday party.

OK, back outside of Armada there
was an obvious alleyway off to the left of the Armada and stairs leading down
to what felt like the edge of town, you know, the poor side of town… the
beginning of the back alleys and side streets where scantily dressed 5 credit hookers
in eff-me-pumps and men of bad repute live and hang out. At the bottom of the
stairs was “Dumpers Depot.”… OMFG… the names are soooo atrocious. Ima write a
letter to Roberts I am.

Feels like heading to the poor side of town

So Dumpers Depot is a junkyard
and salvage operation on the back side of the courtyard. And low and behold,
there is an alleyway leading to the dark, trashy lowrent section of Area 18. I,
of course, haddda go take a look see.

The corner of Dumpster and Skid Row

And it was… a full set of back
alleys littered with trash and trashbags busted open everywhere and puddles of
oily looking water, busted open crates, locked fences, keep out signs, poor
lighting, danger, gloom and despair…

The mean streets of Area 18

Garbage disposal in the far far future... man still can't keep his home clean.

But… as dirty and ugly as the
back side was, it was also very human and for a virtuality, real enough. There
is another courtyard accessible back there… with signs proclaiming “Galleria Retail,
Coming Soon!”… and that block of closed off, under construction buildings faces
this view…

Not bad…

Nope… not bad at all at all…
Yeah… I’ll be coming back, oh yes I will.
=]

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

I have been on and playing EVE,
sporadically yet randomly… Seems others are still in AFG mode and I find myself
getting bored once again. For the last few weeks I have been loggin on pretty
much every night, but all I am doing is scanning all the things, which means
just those few sites and holes that have popped in the prior 24 hrs, and I have
been runnin the gas sites for something to do solo, but overall… meh.

Also last night was the first
night I have logged on Elite Dangerous in a couple months. Not that it’s not a
good game, it is, but I was focusing on grinding up enough Creds to stop
playing just to make creds if you know what I mean, and grinding in any game
just to grind is… well, grindy TBH.I was doing the main Rares
Circuit and pulling in approx. 1m to 1.5m Cred per round trip per session… but
it’s a long 30ish hop/160LYish runs from Zaonce/Lave/Leesti/Diso/Orrere to Witchhaul/Fujin/39
Tauri/Zeessze/George Pantazis then back again…

I always take the
Economical instead of Fastest routes hence the 30ish hops, there are some upsides and downsides to both.The Fastest routes may cut your
hops in half, but they have two major downsides… They push the limits of your
fuel use, so for each hop you have to orbit the sun, if it’s the right type of star, and scoop
fuel for an unacceptably long time. The other issue is when you land on a sun
that is not scoopable… and you have already burned 50% or 80% or more of your
fuel on that time saving long ass jump… you can find yourself rightfully
screwed if there is not a scoopable star in that system or if there isn't a system with
a scoopable star within what jump range you have left.

You have only three options then…
see if any friends can be bothered to yer skeevy ass or… whoyagonnacall? Fuel Rats!

…who will save you by coming and transferring
fuel to you with Fuel
Transferer Drones (OK, Limpets… really? Limpets??) or you can Self-destruct…
you know, push buhtan, count to 30, go Boom, lose ship (replaced) and all cargo
(not), wake up in station…

Fig 1.

or wait until the same thing
happens… only slower…

Fig 2.

<wheeze> tick,
<wheeze> tick… OXYGEN
DEPLETED IN: 0:00… Boom (see Fig
1. above above). Though why in Bob's Name your ship assplodes just because you ran out of gas and air, assphyxiated, turned purple and died I know not... itsa mystery. I mean really... who wires up the self destruct to the air supply?

OK, so I choose Economical. You hop,
you land, check sun for scoopworthyness, if OK, scoop, run a system scan, finish scooping and warp
out to your next system in usually under 30 seconds. Yes, you make a helluva lot
more hops, but you get back into warp and are essentially exposed to threats
for less time each hop AND you NEVER run out of fuel. It does however make for
some looooooong ass boring trips. One nice bonus is I can sell the data
collected by all those system scans… I have picked up as much as an extra 50k
Cred from that.

So even though I finally broke
out of my one game rut, in both the games I play now I am basically bored but
that’s not to say that nothing interesting has happened in my gaming life
recently… it has, though not in either EVE or Elite Dangerous…

In Star Citizen.

Yea, in the game no has yet
played. Oh I know I know there’s the Hangar and Arena Commander… but the game I
am waiting on, the one no one has played yet, is the whole game, the
persistent ‘verse, the thousands of stars and systems. What they have so far is
nice n all, but truthfully in comparison to what we are expecting, it’s just a
taste… like a CQ in EVE that has an Open Door… but one that only leads to one station on SISI,
not to all of TQ. It’s a good taste, but it’s not the GAME… and I want the game, not an
arena.

Anyhoo, I have bought the basic
access with the noob ship, the “Aurora MR AC Starter Pkg”… on discount. I
logged in and walked around and was highly impressed with the First Person
aspects. This game will flat out rock on the Oculus. I like the ships I was
able to board, sit in and walk around in. I haven’t undocked though… as I said,
waiting to undock into the ‘verse not a single ‘room’ or dungeon… EVE and ED
have spoiled me that way.

So, I get this email… “New
Organization Invitation Received” from Roberts Space Industries… from a corp, a
corp that wants me to join them, a corp that wants me to join them in Star Citizen,
a corp that wants me to join them in Star Citizen a game that has not been
released even in beta yet. Interesting.

Now I and you gentle reader are
both fully aware this is most probably a form letter, auto-generated and sent
based on some algorithm that looks at unaffiliated yet active SC accounts...
yet, it was ‘from’ a ColtNickel, I’ll have to see if he is actually a recruiter.
It was a lot of the usual “Pilots just
wanna have fu-un!” kinda recruiting hype, you know… “Hi there! We’re looking for Casual and Hardcore gamers, young and old, wet-behind-the-ears-noobs
and washed-up-cranky-bittervets, crippled, blind or crazy and no more than 30
minutes dead!”

ADI has four Divisions and
currently 2250 members:

Commerce, Mining & Logistics

Asset Protection & Recovery

Exploration & Survey

Fleet Security

…and they have 3 basic Rules:

Rule #1: Do not be a jerk.

Rule #2: Do not cause drama.

Rule #3: Real life comes first.

In EVE, at least in our home corp
HBHI and in HELPeR, #1 & #2 are the same, and #3 is, “RL>Any Game” and
should go without saying. However, some obvious things bear repeating as they
are not as obvious as they should be to some so meh.

Anyway… there was this whole links
you had to click and things you have read and stuff you have to do when you
join and I was all like, but I don’t even know any of these guys. I mean I get
that unless you are joining a corp some friends are already in or something
then you can’t expect to know anyone… but I’m not clicking and reading and
doing until I have talked to a few people at least… geez, what kind of a gurl
do you think I am anyway?

So I did the Comms part and
logged onto their Mumble server. As the letter said I was in the lobby for only
a minute or so and like 6 guys popped up to the lobby and said hi. We chatted
for a while and it was very interesting. A few were former EVE players, none
active the now but all knew of it. And when they asked what I did in EVE…
Wormholes… the response was definitive and immediate… “You need to be in Exploration. Yeah, you’ll do well there.”

One thing that came up was my
age. The guys I met were mostly in college or just starting their careers, and
ADI’s about page says the members are mostly 20s to 30s. I didn’t catch if any
on that night were married, but I didn’t think so. They were pretty interested
in getting an older gamer to join up, I thought that was intriguing…

A few things didn’t sit 100% with
me… Their corp description says, “ADI
believes in training members to a higher level than most orgs." which sounds
all L33T n shit until you read, “Members will be required to obtain a
certificate for any and all gameplay roles in Star Citizen.” which smacks
of EVE style “Minimum SP Requirements” which I don’t like. They also have a
firm anti-piracy rule, which I am mostly fine with… mostly.

Membership Requirements:

* Must have and use Mumble;
headset strongly recommended

* Must be mature

* Must not cause drama

* Must be loyal to Atlas Defense
Industries and not be a part of any other organization

The Membership Requirements
listed above are in principle fine, but in
detail, well...

* I don’t agree with requiring
players in a game to spend money on equipment.

In this case a headset that in
truth is not, like a PC, absolutely required to play the game.

(However as I already has 2
headsets so… meh.)

* Show me a bullet proof acid
test for Maturity and we’ll talk about that one.

* Show me a drama free human and
I’ll ask you to take the corpse back outside.

* ADI is an ‘Exclusive’ Corp,
meaning you aren’t allowed have accounts/alts in other Corps.

Which sounds ok on the face of it,
but like EVE, how in hell could you know? You can’t ‘require’ loyalty… people
and organizations earn that over time by BEING loyal to their members. Either
way I’m not taking any oaths and not crazy about taking ‘tests’ to be allowed
to play with others… it’s a game.

With all the above said, I do
find it interesting that so many people are so deeply involved in the Star
Citizen project. And, TBH, I do hope it all comes to fruition… I really do (I
spent $50 bucks dammit). And at first glance and from a brief Mumble convo I liked
what I heard and there is no ‘perfect’ corp or guild or gamer group… there are
just gamers and I am one of them.

I think mebbe tonight I’ll logon
to SC, get on Mumble and try out the Arena… can’t hurt, and who knows… might be
fun. =]

I think that goes a ways to show
that I am sincere when I say that I really really really want more Art, and
Books and Lore and “stuff” and everything for our game… ok? I really do.
Seriously, I do.

But.

The new “The Fountain War” Kickstarter campaign by author Jeff Edwards in cahoots with… er… um… Partnering with TMM and CCP to write and publish a book about The
Fountain War. The Kickstarter campaign has a goal of $150,000 dollars.I have some concerns, enumerated
below, about this project 'cause...

(1)

According to some comments and
blog posts I have read there is this idea that "Jeff is willing to take on a huge risk, professionally and
personally..." because he is going to take time off from his work-a-day
job and focus on getting the first serial of the Fountain War released as soon
as February 2016 - and then try and make the completion date of December 2016.

$90,000 dollars for… approximately
1 year of research and writing. As I understand it Jeff is keeping his dayjob but
taking time off (part time? on sabbatical leave?) to write the book. Don’t
get me wrong, I am absolutely sure Jeff will write himself to the bone on this
project… I’m just sayin’, can I has that gig?

(2)

$150,000 dollars, okay okay,
$60,000 after Jeff’s living expenses, is still a lot of money for a book about
“this-really-cool-thing-that-happened” (no matter how major or amazing it was)
in a very niche game in the MMO gaming world. Especially when compared to
the little fact that the “History of the Great Empires of EVE” was Kickstarted for originally just $12,500
(topping out at $95,729 in the end) and that book covers a far greater scope of
Nullsec history with pitchurs and evreethang…

So why would a book covering just
one War that spanned but a few months need more than 10 times the funding of
a book covering literally YEARS of EVE history?

Answer... it doesn't.

Then why ask for $150K?

Answer… Mittens.

Why do I say Mittens?

Answer… Have you seen some of the
goal prizes?

(3)

$25 gets you a
digital Holiday card from Mittens and Jeff. <blink> <blink>

$100 to get
'followed' by Mittens (and Jeff) on Twitter, for a year... really? There are
people I LIKE I dunt want following me on Twitter FFS… how could that be worth
even like $10? or…

$100 you can has
‘Live on Twitch’, Mittens and Jeff will drink a toast to YOU, you special
little snowflake you… =\

$1000 Vegas style Dining Experience and private party after with Mittens
and Jeff at next year’s EVE Vegas. Why would I want to do that? I mean
seriously?

$10,000 you get a supplemental chapter all ‘bout little ol’ YOU. Really?
I mean… seriously a whole chapter on one or more (IRL rich) players? I have
NEVER heard of a ‘history’ book ‘selling’ chapters and I would have preferred
to not have heard of it this time. This also has the potential to gets totally
in the way of accurately reporting history.

And I can guarantee you a large
number if not ALL of the key players probably aren’t able to afford $10,000 per
to tell their tale in a whole chapter… so we will likely end up with variations
on some rich kid who spent the whole battle either cloaked up, spamming memes
in local while pounding back beers and Cheetos and Armchair Generaling the
whole fight…

Or just as bad some rich player who spent the whole battle
actually playing League only having to grumpily go AFK from League to check his
EVE clients every 10 or 20 minutes to see if he needed to actually ‘do’
something… You know, turn on an Invuln, cycle a booster, go back into Triage,
try and lock a few targets, cycle the doomsday or some such on one of his 5
Titan alts… yuch.

All the Mittens stuff is only
going to appeal to what is in truth a minority set of the playerbase. Jeff does
not seem to realize he is limiting his potential market. Hell I know Goons who
don’t like Mittens… Look Jeff, you wanna get EVE players lined up around the
Internet just begging to click “Support”? Simple… try giving them ALL something
they’ll want, like this:

I'm not hatin’ on the overall ‘concept’...
I really am not, I own damn near every book so far written on EVE. I am however
very concerned with the gross overreach in asking for $150k and some of the marketing
ideas are, IMHO, just plain wrong.

(4) and this is, for me, the BIG
ONE…

When is some writer, any writer
gonna get head outta ass and write about someone other than Mittens? and while
you’re at it, how about the rest of New Eden too? What, Hisec, Lowsec and especially
my beloved Negsec (Wormhole Space, Anoikis where there be Sleepers…), do
these spaces where the majority of the players live and die, do they have NOTHING
worth writing about? I know, from personal experience and for a fact, that they
do.

And I am not sorry at all but
Nullsec is not the End Game of EVE and Goons and Mittens have not won it...There are thousands and thousands
of stories across the width and breadth of the New Eden cluster just waiting to
be told. Will somebody please step up and tell them?

Them as what follow me...

Graphiti...

Round and round we go...

Fav Post Bytes...

"Maybe we're not that different after all and I have my own reality to get to grips with."Absence of Substance

Now THAT is wisdom...

We are, each and alone, the absolute center of our subjective 'verse... this is the way of life.To see another's POV as if it were your own... this is the way of truth...To allow that some others have POVs you cannot and will never understand, and yet accept them as they are, this is the way of acceptance...To kill them all without rancor or anger, but in brotherhood... this is the way of EVE.

This Is What We DO!!!

POD Locked

We're Soooo Bad at Hisec!

New Odysseyt Wormhole Jump Animations

EVE Forever, the Second Decade

EVE Easter Egg

Quafe's The One

Negato:

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